The year 2016 was witness to some gigantic strides in advancing how the world works, through the power of science and technology. From revolutionizing transportation to doubling the battery life of your smartphone, here are the best tech breakthroughs of the year.

Spoiler: We got ourselves a working jetpack! In your face, James Bond!

1. Hyperloop One

Elon Musk is the technological genius of this era — and when he says he wants to change transportation, he means it. No, this isn’t about the Tesla electric car. Musk is tackling mass transit with the Hyperloop One, a tube-based train-like system that will cover large distances at incredible speeds. And this year, it was finally demonstrated.

2. Passive Wi-Fi and Li-Fi

This year, students and researchers at the University of Washington discovered a new way to work with Wi-Fi. They call it Passive Wi-Fi. This technology will enable smartphones and laptops to “talk” to existing wireless networks by using less energy than they do now.

4. Passenger Drones

Drones are nothing new — the idea of robots that fly like airplanes is ho-hum stuff now — but how about robots that ferry you from one place to another, like an aerial taxi? If that piques your interest, you’ll love the advances some companies are making with passenger drones.

5. AlphaGo: Better Artificial Intelligence

You probably heard about this in the middle of the year. A robot beat the world’s best human player of a strategy board game called Go. What’s the big deal, you wondered? Well, to put it in simple terms, Go is so complex in terms of strategic combinations that it makes chess seem like a kid’s toy.

6. HDMI Alt Mode

Major technological breakthroughs tell us about what our world will be like a few years down the line. But it’s the small things that have immediate effect on our lives. Take, for example, the new HDMI Alt Mode specification, which was agreed upon by the groups that control both HDMI and USB Type-C standards.

At the moment, Ultra HD Blu-Ray is a little inaccessible. You need a player that supports the standard, which your current-gen Blu-ray player or PlayStation 4 doesn’t. You also need a TV that can support HDR technology to take full advantage of the tech. It’s a mess, but at least we have actually started with it in the market, so things should settle down soon enough and you can make a wise purchase decision.

SolidEnergy Systems, a spin-off of MIT, made a new lithium-metal battery that is smaller, faster, and doubles the capacity of current lithium-ion batteries. Basically, in two batteries of the same physical size, the lithium-metal battery will last twice as long. Another way to think of it, we’ll get the same battery life for half the size. This is one piece of future technology that we’re looking forward to more than any other!

10. The First True Jetpack

Finally, we come to the big breakthrough of the year. It’s everyone’s dream to fly through the air with the greatest of ease, and a personal jetpack is the sci-fi highlight we’ve always looked forward to. This year, the JB-9 by Jetpack Aviation turned sci-fi into reality by demonstrating the first real in-flight jetpack.

You can go as high as 10,000 feet and you can go as fast as 60 mph. There are no tricks here, like upthrusting water or using a miniaturized helicopter. It’s what you imagine a jetpack to be when you close your eyes and let your imagination go wild. Read all about it and start saving up!

What’s Got You Excited?

Which technology in the past year really astounded you? Which of these featured breakthroughs are you looking forward to seeing so it can change your life as you know it? Let’s talk about the future.